Total Smackdown

"I don't like the question"

So says a so-called expert on Canadian health care when demanded for answers by a representative of the American people.  As Oliver points out,

David Gratzer is from the conservative Manhattan Institute, one of the organizations designed to obstruct progressive change in America. In this case, he gets confronted on statistics about Canada’s health care and conservative FUD about waiting lines and rationing, etc.

One of my best friends, Jon, asked a helluva question back in the 2004 Presidential race.  "Why aren't we supporting Kucinich?"  I admit to being kind of slow, sometimes, but I now mirror his question.  Watch this and you'll find out why that question is so prescient.

Comments

[MTSentinel]

How is the high cost of health care due to health insurance companies?

[rapier]

The high cost of health care is partly due to insurance companies for many reasons. The simplest is administrative costs. It costs a lot of money figuring out how not to pay claims. It costs providers a lot of money to get paid. The blizzard of paperwork that bounces around the system for even a simple visit is mind boggling. Easily 25% of all medical care dollars go to billing administration. Insurers, providers and patients are locked into a dysfunctional dance. The system is insane.

That said Kucinich made a terrible error framing the question in that way. He guaranteed that the flack would not answer, because he would refuse to recognize the question as legitimate. Even asking questions of a flack, a paid spokesman, is a mistake. Dishonesty is guaranteed. He was not going to answer as a citizen. He was going to give the answers he is paid to give. He can pretend they are the answers he really believes. Everyone knows better. The entire exercise is theater.

[Mark T]

Sentinal - it goes far beyond making health care more expensive. Private for-profit health insurance is diametrically at odds with any health care system - by design, they have to minimize claims, avoid sick people, and dump their costs on other entities, usually government (hence, Medicare and Medicaid, where the dumped go.)

In most of Europe, private health insurance companies are not allowed to operate as for-profit entities. That's the only way they are compatible with the public good, aka health care for all. They have to be treated as a utility and heavily regulated.